The Taliban Are Losing Control of Afghanistan

Something is brewing in the high hills of Afghanistan, and it spells trouble for the ruling Taliban government. On the 1st of August, the organization was delivered a message by a little-known resistance organization, the Afghan United Front, otherwise known as the AUF.

The message wasn't written in ink, it was written in blood, with a wave of attacks unleashed across Afghanistan, each one with the Taliban squarely in the AUF's crosses.

The attacks were well-planned, well-coordinated, and brutally effective, and since the 1st of August, they've only continued. We're only weeks away from the five-year anniversary of America's desperate Afghanistan withdrawal and the fall of the capital city of Kabul. But now the Taliban's fragile rule over Afghanistan is at increasing risk of coming apart.

From a growing southern rebel movement to a recent border war against a much better-armed neighbor, the Taliban's prospects already were not looking great. Introduce the AUF, a group that appears more than capable of sowing chaos wherever they see fit, and Afghanistan's theocratic leadership could be in serious trouble.

Worst of all, the man at the helm of the AUF insurgency isn't a new threat.

He's one of the most persistent and effective adversaries the Taliban have faced in the 21st century, and more likely than not, he's got some very powerful allies lurking in the shadows. Hidden hands. On their own, the events of the 1st of August would have been a bad day for the Taliban, but not all that much worse than the usual.

On that day when the AUF chose to reveal itself to the world, the Taliban leadership in Kabul learned quickly that they'd have to deal with a new persistent headache. But at first, the group's capacity to actually carry out attacks at scale seemed to be an open question.

First, the AUF claimed credit for an attack in Kandahar that killed two Taliban fighters, but as of the time of that announcement, the attack was nearly a year old.

For Taliban higher-ups, it might have been a bit concerning that somebody had come around and openly claimed credit for an old attack, but the tactical window to make something of that attack had long since passed.

Hours later, the group took credit for a small-scale raid that day in the city of Lashgargar in Helmand province, a much more timely attack, and one that showed that the AUF had some minor operational capacity, but still nothing to get too worried about.

That day, testimony from the AUF's leader was published in the Long War Journal, a news website for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the reports on the global war on terror and its aftermath.

It's an outlet with links to anti-jihadist groups all over the world, so it wasn't much of a shock that the AUF would choose that outlet to make its voice heard.

According to the group's leader, the AUF had spent years learning from past mistakes in anti-Taliban operations, developed a team of generals with a committed strategy, had chosen to commence operations at a time and place of their choosing.

Again, for the Afghan Taliban, none of that was welcome news, but now that they're in charge, people take shots at the Taliban all the time, and often they become nothing more than a minor annoyance.

But over the following days, the AUF revealed that it was more than just another vigilante group. Within five days, the group had claimed credit for six more attacks, each of which seemed calibrated to send a very specific message.

In Baghiz province, the AUF hunted down two Taliban members who had alleged had participated in the torture of execution. forces personnel had killed them both.

In Ghor province, the group retaliated against the Taliban in response to the killing of a woman who had served as an officer within the Afghan National Police, which was taken over by the Taliban, purged, and flooded with loyalists after the fall of Kabul.

The AUF's retaliation for her death saw the group take over a Taliban base, killing two Taliban fighters and wounding four others before stealing weapons and equipment. In Fariyad province, the group stated that it assassinated a member of the Taliban Intelligence Service, which spends its time mostly in pursuit of dissent among ordinary Afghan citizens.

In Kandahar, the AUF killed two Taliban guards at a police station, as the Long War Journal explained, quote, in retaliation for acts of torture and imprisonment of innocent Afghans. Also in Kandahar, the AUF carried out two more assassinations, each targeting another member of Taliban intelligence.

So after his first week of publicly acknowledged operations, the AUF has made a few things clear.

First, this is a group that's focused explicitly on punishing the Taliban, rooting out and destroying the worst elements of its state repression apparatus, and avenging Taliban crimes against people who'd fought for a better Afghanistan than this one.

Second, the group demonstrated its substantial reach, claiming attacks across a total of five provinces along a north-south pathway in the nation's western half, although it's clearly concentrating an outsized share of its operations in Kandahar. As the group's leader described, quote, choosing Kandahar was deliberate.

We want to show them that there is nowhere safe from our attacks, even in the Taliban's supreme leader's house, end quote.

Kandahar is, indeed, where the supreme leader of the Taliban lives, and it's a southern, ethnic, Pashtun majority province with historically high support for the Taliban, whereas most anti-Taliban organizations hide out in the less friendly north.

And third, the group had demonstrated that it was able to break through the Taliban's veil of secrecy, identify and track sensitive individuals, and dispatch them at a time and place of the AUF's choosing, often tying them to specific crimes and abuses.

Over the following days, the group has kept up the pressure, most notably in a drone attack against the capital city of Kabul, where an AUF drone struck and destroyed at least one oil storage facility.

A graphic posted by the group before that strike on the 9th of August took credit for the killings of a total of 18 Taliban fighters across eight provinces, along with 13 others wounded. But it's time that we talk about the man behind the rise of the AUF, because it's in understanding him that we start to get a clearer picture of what's really going on here.

Meet Sami Sadat, age 41, born and raised in Kabul. He's not exactly a household name here in the global west, but he's a well-known figure for people who've studied the Afghanistan conflict over the last two decades. Sadat is a highly experienced covert operations commander.

He started working with the pre-Taliban Afghan government in 2007, and by 2013, he had become the director of Afghanistan's covert action program. Then elevated to the rank of general, Sadat took charge of an elite Afghan clandestine unit that he ran for years, spearheading operations against al-Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Among his impressive feats as the unit's leader, Sadat oversaw the recovery of the son of Pakistan. former prime minister, who was kidnapped by al-Qaeda, had disappeared into Pakistan, and arranged the death of the leader of the group that assassinated another one of Pakistan's former premiers.

But just as interesting as his service record is his education, a comprehensive training at Britain's Joint Services Command and Staff College, training as a battalion commander at the Polish Defense Academy, and significant time spent at the NATO Military Academy in Germany.

This is a guy with deep ties to Western militaries, and a man who still enjoys a lot of close connections on Capitol Hill in the United States as his organization works out of an office in Virginia. Those connections and Sadat's overall background start to give away the game on what the AUF is really about.

It's important to understand that the Afghan National Army, prior to the Taliban takeover in 2021, may not have been a particularly strong or capable organization. Just look at its utter collapse in the final months of the US withdrawal.

But there were highly capable, highly experienced, and highly motivated units within that military, especially in special operations and clandestine groups.

There weren't enough of those people to prevent a full-scale Taliban offensive, but many of them survived the takeover and either disappeared into Afghanistan without a trace, or went abroad with the goal to return one day. Sami Sadat is very much a part of that world.

He's a trusted ground commander with a proven track record, and he's got long-standing connections with Western intelligence, special operations, and covert action commanders.

Although the AUF only rarely claimed credit for attacks before this month, Sadat has led the organization since it was founded back in 2023. In the eyes of American and allied decision-makers, especially with histories in Afghanistan, Sadat is one of the good ones.

And if the United States were to be interested in supporting covert action in Afghanistan, hypothetically speaking, of course, then Sadat is probably on the shortlist of preferred Afghan collaborators.

Moreover, Sadat hails from the Pashtun ethnic group, fluent in both of the country's official languages, Pashto and Dari, making him a particularly meaningful choice to oppose the Pashtun majority Taliban.

He seems to be cultivating a network of ex-soldiers, anti-Taliban cells, and personal loyalists in Pashtun majority areas, especially in Kandahar, and he's known to be a precise calculating commander who spent substantial time setting the conditions for success before he would actually greenlight an open campaign like this one.

In Sadat's own words, again speaking with the Long War Journal, an organization known for its own deep ties with the American neoconservative security folks who've made Afghanistan their life's work, the AUF is seeking material support from NATO to fight the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and even the Pakistani Taliban.

Quoting Sadat, "...success for us at this stage of the conflict is keeping the Taliban busy fighting us so they do not have time to torture our people." All told, it certainly seems as if Sami Sadat and his allies have chosen to get the band back together for what might turn out to be a Western-backed push against the Taliban across their historic

Strongholds.

Right place, right time. The rise of the Afghans The Afghan United Front presents a real headache for the Taliban government no matter which way you slice it, but by itself, the AUF is unlikely to be able to engage in a nationwide offensive at scale.

Even the Long War Journal acknowledges as much, quoting, "...the AUF's emergence likely does not make the anti-Taliban resistance an existential threat to the Taliban government." But what the AUF does accomplish is to introduce a new, highly competent, well-targeted threat at exactly the wrong time as problems for the Taliban government accumulate across

All fronts.

The AUF is far from the only anti-Taliban rebel group active in Afghanistan. The most prominent group is the National Resistance Front, an organization that's been fighting a guerrilla war against the Taliban since the fall of the US-backed government.

The National Resistance Front is among the many rebel groups that are strongest in the Northeast, but they've claimed hundreds of attacks in Kabul over the years, and they operate infiltration networks in the southern and western parts of the country, where they've almost certainly come into contact with Sami Siddharth and his people.

And then there's the Afghan Freedom Front, also based in the north and active across the country with a history of attacks in and around Kabul. Together, the two factions mostly draw on the support of groups who are regarded as outsiders in Afghanistan—ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and others.

Those two organizations form the core of anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, but they're aided by a range of ethnic militia groups, religious militant cells, ex-military units, and other minor factions. Now that it's operating alongside them, it's unclear whether the AUF can rival either of the biggest groups in size.

But the AUF provides a drastic expansion of the anti-Taliban coalition's reach and provides the best chance at making inroads with the Pashtun population, whose support would be critical if the Taliban were to be seriously threatened.

But right now, there's another group making some serious noise—a Taliban splinter group loyal to a Tajik-Taliban commander, Juma Khan Fatah. In the north-eastern province of Badakhshan, Fatah's forces have been in a dispute with the national Taliban over the control of the province's lucrative gold mining industry.

That dispute has just recently turned violent, with Fatah's fighters using the porous border with Tajikistan and Taliban leadership sending helicopters and significant ground forces in order to fight them.

On the 13th of August, the Tajik faction killed a key Taliban-appointed mayor in a car bombing days after the assassination of the Taliban's local head of information and culture.

While the death toll is difficult to pin down, dozens of fighters from both sides are believed to have been killed already, and the scope and intensity of the violence is widening by the day. Like the AUF, the Tajik-Taliban splinter forces are not enough to bring down the Afghan-Taliban government.

But it's not that simple. As Afghan journalist Bilal Suwari explained on X, the AUF has arrived at the perfect moment to exploit the northern fighting. Quote, operations in Badakhstan have already challenged Taliban control in the northeast.

A second front in Kandahar would place pressure on the movement at both ends of the country, and shatter the claim that resistance is confined to the north.

Sadat, no- is the south it is the nerve center of taliban power any sustained armed presence there would be both militarily disruptive and politically humiliating end quote nor is the taliban government only dealing with internal emergencies starting in october of last year and continuing through 2026 the nation of pakistan has been engaged in an on-again

Off-again border war that's brought disproportionate destruction across afghanistan kabul is vastly outgunned by islamabad and while the afghan government has insisted that it's been able to retaliate against pakistan forces the balance of power between the two sides is clear hundreds of civilians have been killed in afghanistan and according to the un high

Commissioner for refugees 115 000 afghans and 3 000 pakistanis have been displaced during and after the most recent phase of the conflict pakistan has accused afghanistan of both supporting the pakistani taliban an insurgent group that's attacked pakistan relentlessly in an internal conflict and receiving support from pakistan's arch rival india as it

Pertains to the new auf offensive the pakistan war matters for two reasons first the conflict has degraded the taliban's fighting capacity spread its forces and divided its attention to try and defend a long porous and poorly monitored border zone second and potentially much more important pakistan's powerful intelligence services are likely looking for ways

To degrade the taliban from within sami sadat and his kandahar based networks are a prime candidate for collaboration especially because sadat maintains close ties with american legislators and u.s intelligence at a time when islamabad and washington are getting closer than ever elsewhere the taliban face other existential threats not least of them the

Islamic state khorasan province an exceptionally dangerous islamic state franchise that's carried out or attempted attacks in the us russia central europe and iran while often causing chaos in afghanistan but while the islamic state is yet another destabilizing force that the taliban have to worry about they face an even deeper threat across the nation a

Rising public discontent under their rule despite the pledges that the taliban made during their takeover in 2021 the organization has failed to secure acceptance in the international community and it hasn't truly gained either political legitimacy or uniform public acceptance in its own country the nation's food shortages and malnutrition crises are only

Getting worse as other countries force refugees to return and thus place additional strain on food systems the country's economy is still floundering with unemployment high development aid withheld and foreign bank accounts frozen persistent and worsening droughts and other natural disasters have only made the situation worse the taliban's results haven't

Come anywhere close to justify their crackdowns their social controls their functioning erasure of women from society or the continued conflicts against internal and external adversaries it's difficult to know just how unpopular the taliban is of course but public disillusionment has taken hold and it only seems to be growing so the arrival of sami sadat and

His afghan united front may not be enough to topple the taliban outright but at a moment when taliban rule is already very fragile the auf has arrived at just the right time to make an impact in times of crisis repressive regimes roll off on the communities and regions where they draw the greatest support, in this case, the Pashto-majority southern and

Western parts of Afghanistan.

But now, that's precisely where the AUF has arrived to start nipping at the Taliban's heels, probably with the backing of foreign powers, and certainly with the connections, intelligence, and operational experience to make an impact.

The AUF is not going to conquer Afghanistan, at least not by itself, but it's one among a wide range of anti-Taliban forces with the same overall goal.

If the standard chance of bringing down the Taliban, those forces will have to dismantle Afghanistan to unspool the threads that bind the Taliban society together and weaken the Taliban to a point that it will struggle to resist.

With the AUF's arrival, that process is now underway, and the Taliban has few options left to interrupt a process that will eventually take it apart.